Christianity in Africa = pouring acid down kids throats

Virtually everyone knows about the Salem Witch Trials here in the US. People were accused of witchcraft due to benign reasons such as their family member falling sick which is always the action of a witch. Now it was just a matter of making the accusation and the game was on. 150 were arrested with 19 being executed for witchcraft. It's such a shame that virtually all of us today know of the story.
Teaching a mystical view of life is dangerous. You have no way to verify the ground that you stand on. Morality in my Atheistic view of the world is as simple as, does it do greater good for the society? If you are Christian it's as simple as citing an Archaic doctrine that teaches you that you can appease god if you kill your insolent child. Or that possessions happen and Jesus is the cure. I can't turn to this line of thinking. i must figure out for myself if what i am doing is good for others.
Christians have been going into Africa to save these heathen Africans that just don't know any better. The result? The highest AIDS rates in the world because they listen to the Catholic Church. Somehow Adultery is less an offense than using a condom. There are 29 million in Africa with AIDS. Thank you Jesus! What else hath the good book wrought? 200 accusations of witchcraft.

The Story of Nwanaokwo Edet

His family pastor had accused him of being a witch, and his father then tried to force acid down his throat as an exorcism. It spilled as he struggled, burning away his face and eyes. The emaciated boy barely had strength left to whisper the name of the church that had denounced him — Mount Zion Lighthouse.

Anthropologists study other cultures. A clear and universal edict of these people is to not change the culture with their presence. Christians don't recognize this. They are so ethnocentric that they feel that they must save other cultures. They teach people to read and hand them a Bible as if it's a book about love. They really believe that it is a book of love. They've sat in a church for much of their lives here pastors talk for hours about one sentence. What they don't do is read the next full page and learn that they must not suffer a witch to live. Their abject ignorance to what their book says is leading to death. Not just in a hypothetical way, but in a demonstrable fashion. I want to stop and that Christians for the 200 deaths here and even just 1 million of the deaths due to AIDS and the lack of condoms.

The leader of the Evangelicals in Africa had this to say about his organization, "We have grown so much in the past few years we cannot keep an eye on everybody," he explained. Then maybe you should not exist and recognize the great damage that you have brought to Africa? Maybe the greater good is to say that you've went beyond your intentions and feel that Africa isn't ready for this. You realize that this will, not might, lead to warring between the Muslims and Christians of Africa. Right? How many more will have to die so that you can save face?

Christians. Stay out of developing countries with your message. You have brought famine, war, monarchies, slavery, witch trials and many other things of this ilk to the nations of the world. Can you just for 50 years, give it a rest and see what happens? The notion that your religion has brought great good to the world ignores history, and current events. You bring hate, ignorance, and even death through your inadequate knowledge and teachings. If you haven't read and studied the Bible, you have no business teaching anyone else about what it says. I doubt anyone at 20 (age of many missionaries) fully comprehends what the Bible says or how it relates historically. I implore you, exercise some restraint and introspection before you introduce a new culture to a litany of ways that they might kill each other.

Easy and comfortable for you to say as a member of the most spoiled, well fed, and housed society existing on the planet.

How many houses have you built in Central America, how many medical supplies have you provided, how many vaccines have you given, how many kids have you taught how to read or write during your summers? Spend some time trying to help people in a country where the annual per capita income is less than what a kid can make here part time in a couple of weeks at McDonald's. If you have, my apologies, but the story and your post are just more of the "bad news sells more papers" tripe.

Yes, missionaries teach the Gospel of Christ, but vast majority of the time is spent serving the people who live there not giving them a "sign here or else" message. Christians are tasked to do more than just provide lip service in their service to Christ.

And I guess we shouldn't think about the fact that children are already killed and abused in these countries, with or without the message of Christ. No, better for us not to think about it at all and just keep our meddling imperialist coffers closed and our hands on the remote. Here you go kid, have a condom and a nice life. Don't worry about that dysentery, you'll get rid of it one way or another. Yes, now that I think about it, it would be a lot easier and conflict free to sit at home watching House reruns. Thanks.

Hate, ignorance, and death are already in these places - no one has to bring it in.

"Hate, ignorance, and death are already in these places - no one has to bring it in."

Well, I really think that if Africa had not been colonized and plundered by Europeans, then the massive amount of strife seen in modern Africa would not be with us today. Admittedly, I am no expert on this subject, but it is something that I plan on studying in the next few years. And while some might point out that the colonialists were mostly Christian men, I would think it a mistake to blame religion when it was simply greed and the ability to dominate that led to African tribes being driven from their cultures and villages into city centers that they were ill-adapted for.

But on the subject at hand, it is all to easy to start pointing fingers everywhere else in order to distract from this specific matter. And to imply that secular organizations do nothing for Africans is absurd. As is the strawman example of "here you go kid, have a condom and a nice life. Don't worry about that dysentery". Why a kid? What about the millions of adults who contract diseases and die every year, leaving orphans to languish in camps or worse? The Pope explicitly preaching that condoms causes disease was the single most morally reprehensible act I have witnessed in quite awhile. Not only was it an assault on reality and science, it was literally a grave disservice to Africans that follow Catholic creeds. And for what? All in the name of God? It is better to suffer and die than have sex? Twisted logic, I say.

If Christians are compelled to do the good in a country, that's great. Keep your message at home. You can't foresee how that will play out in a different culture. I've given two examples in Africa before. So let's see it in another. You like Central America? Off we go.

In Nicaragua Abortion was made illegal. What could those results possibly be?Nearly 90 women have died in Nicaragua as a direct or indirect result of the repeal, one year ago... Lobbied by the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church and conservative evangelical pastors, on Oct. 26, 2006 the Nicaraguan parliament approved the draft law to revoke article 165 of the criminal code, which had permitted abortion for medical reasons since 1893Link

This is what happens when people meddle in other cultures. With these developing countries that really don't understand how the world got here or how science works, you should try to see what they see. You can't figure out how to get clean water, but they flew in on a plane, got you the clean water, then they tell you about god and how the world was created. You just might believe that they are correct. As a result you'll listen to their words. Abortion is wrong in all cases, kill the witches, thoughts and words that have consequences. The message of Jesus doesn't need to be shared. The damage resulting can be greater and less just than good you did. So what have you brought. Doing the good and patting yourself on the back doesn't seek what have been the results of your interaction. All three of my examples show that implicitly.

So what have I done. Nothing outside of paying my taxes. We average around 30 billion a year in foreign aid in the US. That would happen with or without my interaction. But there is a point to be made here. When the US or UN deliver aid, they don't bring a culture altering message. They bring the food and the technology then they get out (unless there are natural resources to plunder).

The Gates Foundation (atheist) is seeking better agricultural techniques largely in Africa. They don't bring the message of the mystical, they bring science. As a result they don't cause deaths, they bring the potential to further life.

The lack of cultural understanding all over the world creates monsters that we can't handle. eg "Why don't many Islamic countries want freedom?" If we sit there and force it down their throat because it's what we would want, we do damage to the culture and our relationships. If we are to give and do things for others it should be for altruistic reasons.

I spent a summer long ago on an Indian reservation in Nevada helping to repaint a church. As I slept on a pew inside of the church with my ears constantly listening in fear for the rattle of a snake, the image of a darkskinned Christ hanging from the ceiling reinforced doubts in my mind. The American Indians there had painted Christ in their own image. As a minority myself, I didn't know whether to be amused, proud, or just outright disgusted.

So, what was that I thought. You mean we can simply take a majestic being, called God, and choose whatever skin color to make us identify with Him, Her, or It better? For the first time, Christianity felt silly and self-righteous.

Why couldn't I help these people for the sheer sake of helping them?

Why did I feel like I was offering something in return for a blessing from Jesus. It was selfish then and it would be now.

Back then, my Christian missionary group offered our white Jesus, enabling the American Indians to refashion "His" image, and we all went home suppossedly feeling that a great deed had been done. Meanwhile, I personally watched some American Indian males stumble into church visibly drunk.

What some of those citizens needed was substance-abuse counseling and better opportunities beyond casinos, false hopes of purification from sin in some after-life, and a sun-tanned Jesus to make them feel like even God could identify with their troubles.

African refugee camps, Indian reservations, inner-city projects ....bring them to Jesus and let's cross our fingers that safe sex, substance-free living, and jobs will come from some God-like force thereafter...self-righteous and just plain deceitful.